


Now I'm Lost

by allinfected



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: fully crayfish, rick grimes goes crazy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-27 00:34:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1708403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allinfected/pseuds/allinfected
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rick Grimes wakes from his coma to discover it was all a dream, induced by all his fears and worries, accomplishments and shortcomings, and he struggles to cope with the world as it really is. </p><p> </p><p>"She says he was sobbing in his sleep, and who is Judith and who took her? There's concern in her eyes, Rick sees, but something else too. She's over it. It's been a month. Rick should be normal by now, he should be okay because it was just a coma, just a dream, everything should be back to normal. </p><p>When she brings up the idea of having another child the next morning, his eye twitches."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now I'm Lost

**Author's Note:**

> this is just something I wrote a while ago and decided to post. there's not much more yet but there might be. unbeta'd and stuff.

"Rick? Rick." His therapists' voice brings him out of his own head and back into the real world, and he realises that he's been staring at the coffee table for three minutes while she talked. "Rick..." Her voice is sympathetic but she's growing impatient, he can tell. "It's normal to experience this feeling after what you went through, being shot can be a very traumatic event and sometimes that feeling just gets the better of us. Post-traumatic stress is common in cases like yours, and that's what I think you're suffering from at the moment."

Rick nods idly, only vaguely listening to her. Doctor Banks has been the therapist of choice for the King County PD and their officers for a few years now, he's seen her around the office and town many times over this time, but the encounter he remembers most vividly is the park; she's the first walker he took out. He left her the first time, but went back and put her out of her miser-- He stops the thought. It didn't happen. None of it did. Just faces and names constructed out of vague memories, like having passed someone he didn't know in the street and them becoming part of his all-encompassing coma nightmare. 

It felt so real. It was a nightmare that lasted an eternity, until a dreamed up bullet wound to the leg suddenly pulled him out of it. He doesn't sleep a whole lot anymore, can't bare to be dragged back into the world that he was sure was real for so, so long. When he does sleep, it's only for a few hours at a time, and it usually ends with Lori waking him, asking "Who's this governor?" or "You're talking about the CDC in your sleep, again." And he can't bare this much longer, he might go insane, he knows how it feels because it felt so goddamn real in his head and he's sure it's happening again now. 

Rick can remember everything, like it actually had happened. He remembers the way everyone spoke, he remembers smells and sights and he remembers Lori, with Shane, and even though it was just a dream he can't look either of them in the eye anymore and he can't help watching them, both, when they're near each other and when they're not for any telltale signs that what he dreamt had even the slightest amount of reality to it. 

"It's not being shot," he finally says to Dr Banks, taking in the time on the wall, the colour of her jeans, the fabric of the couch, anything he can to avoid looking her in the eye. Because he needs to tell someone. He needs to get it out, he doesn't want to tell a therapist because he doesn't want them thinking it's crazy, he's crazy, but he can't tell Lori or Shane or anyone else for that matter. She's puling away, Lori is, he can feel it, has been able to feel it for years and he thinks that maybe the dream is a big manifestation of his fears, his thoughts, his desires, but doesn't know where everything fits. It's like a puzzle that he created but can't put back together. "It's. I dreamed. I had a dream while I was in the coma."

Doctor Banks sits back in her suede armchair with a kind smile on her face, a notebook in her lap not tilted away from him. There's not much written on there at the moment, just a few notes about PTSD. "That's not uncommon, Rick. Just like a normal REM sleep, a coma patient can have dreams. Was it the nature of the dream that was disturbing? Or the fact you dreamed at all?"

"The. The nature," he tells her. He clutches his shaking hands together tightly before reaching up to rub a hand over his clean-shaven chin. "I dreamed the world ended, the dead rose and I was the leader of a group of survivors. It...felt so real. I thought it was real. I don't sleep a lot anymore. I don't know how without dreaming about it all again. I feel like I did in the dream, these days. My hands are. Dirty. I know what I did in the dream and I can't remember how it feels to not be that person..." His voice is increasingly quieter the longer he talks and by the time he's finished his face is wet with tears.

Doctor Banks has a concerned look on her face. "Do you want to tell me about the things you did in the dream, Rick? Tell me all the things that happened."

He notes there's only 26 minutes of his session left and he lets out a shaky, humourless chuckle. "We don't have time."

"Why don't you just start off, wherever you want to start, and we'll pick up where ever else you want next week?"

He doesn't know how to explain it properly, can't explain properly how horrific it all was, how real it was, cannot understate anything because he wants this to be taken seriously. He's so scared and so alone in all of this. He starts at the beginning. There's no other way to start this. He's in the hospital. He's woken up and the nurse doesn't come. Don't Open, Dead Inside. Outside. The first walker. Morgan and Duane, he jumps forward, tells her that Duane died, Morgan had to clear, he tells her about Shane and Lori and finding them at the quarry, he tells her about the cheating and then about the baby, and killing Shane. Cuffing Merle to that roof. The farm, the prison, Woodbury. The death, Lori dying, seeing her everywhere, all the people they lost and when he lost himself. The council. Michonne. Andrea. Carl being shot. Hershel saving him. The Greene's. He jumps around so much and skims over so many details but his dream has been properly outlined only 32 minutes later and Doctor Banks is ushering him out of her office, probably with a hand cramp from all the speed-writing she's been doing, and a reassuring smile. His appointment is same time next week but he considers not going. He doesn't need her thinking he's crazy, he knows it wasn't real, but. He can't accept it.

It's only that night when he asks Lori, if she had to leave the house because of an emergency, what would she grab, and she answers "the photo albums," Rick realises he wants the dream back. He wants it to be real. 

He sleeps that night and Lori has to shake him awake. She says he was sobbing in his sleep, and who is Judith and who took her? There's concern in her eyes, Rick sees, but something else too. She's over it. It's been a month. Rick should be normal by now, he should be okay because it was just a coma, just a dream, everything should be back to normal. 

When she brings up the idea of having another child the next morning, his eye twitches.


End file.
